How do you save a dead language from being forgotten? The answer’s simple enough: teach the written version to younger generations and preserve native literature. Carve it into stone in three languages if you’re feeling particularly ambitious. But how do you save a dead sign language? The answer’s a bit more complicated.
Take Latin as a classic dead language. Shortly after the Roman Empire fell, citizens became more immersed in cultures around them and learned their languages. Those languages adopted them as well, by taking some of their vocabulary. Soon enough, nobody spoke Latin, but it remained engraved on walls, scrawled in books, and spoken in scientific terms and fragments of romance languages.
Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) declined like any other dead language—it phased out when it wasn’t needed anymore—but it becomes muddled in the specifics. Instead of dying out solely because successive generations learned more widely used languages, it declined with globalization.
Deafness was a congenital trait in the small town of Chilmark in Western Martha’s Vineyard. Accordingly, the rate of deafness rose to ¼ for Chilmark, and 1/155 for Martha’s Vineyard, in contrast to the national average, 1/5700. As globalization made transportation easier, former Martha’s Vineyard residents were no longer confined to the island. Many people moved to mainland and reproduce with non-islanders, which caused a decrease in the deafness gene. Between the early 1700s and 1952, Martha’s Vineyard’s residents, hearing and deaf alike, communicated regularly through MVSL. The language died in 1952 with its last remaining signer with Chilmark’s genetic deafness.
American Sign Language (ASL) is to MVSL as romance languages are to Latin; ASL seems to borrow some of MVSL’s signs and structure. However, passing down signs is not enough to preserve the entire language. MVSL had no literature or written components, and never had an spoken part, but still could have been preserved in other ways. Signers could have drawn signs into books to teach others, but MVSL ingrained into such a tightly knit community that there was no need to do so. If the video camera had been invented, signers could have made videos of themselves, but alas it was not. MVSL has no traces left, so it cannot be preserved.
In order for a language to be preserved well, it needs to have a widespread cultural significance, and a younger generation to learn it. Latin’s significance mainly comes from a long historical chain of upper class families insisting that all proper men must learn it. That being said, people still learn it today for its part in terminology (biological, medical, legal, philosophical, and likely more), literature, and to understand more of the western world. Conversely, MVSL lacks both of these factors. It had a very specific cultural significance, and its target younger generation dissolved.
Some argue that ASL is in danger of dying out like its predecessor. New forms of hearing aids, such as the cochlear implant are becoming more accessible to deaf communities. As more deaf people can hear, sign language could no longer be necessary. On the other hand, ASL is the first language of 500,000 people, and ASL is the 4th most studied modern language in colleges according to the modern language association.
Should the language begin to die, ASL has both of the successful preservation factors. It will not fade without a trace. There are dozens of books that teach ASL vocabulary and websites that do the same. Signers motion along to political debates on TV. On YouTube, people make videos signing to song lyrics. There are even some deaf vloggers. ASL is culturally significant to the deaf community, and has a widespread audience across America, hearing and deaf alike.
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Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/marthas-vineyard-sign-
language-asl/407191/
